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Assessing and evaluating
English language proficiency of students
Language proficiency refers to a person’s ability to
use a language for a variety of purposes, including speaking, listening,
reading, and writing. Assessment and evaluation are essential components of
teaching and learning English. Assessment is the process of gathering
information on student learning and evaluation is the process of analyzing,
reflecting upon, and summarizing assessment information, and making judgments
and decisions based on the information collected.
Without an effective evaluation program it is
impossible to know whether students have learned, whether teaching has been
effective, or how best to address student learning needs. The quality of the
assessment and evaluation in the educational process has a profound and
well-established link to student performance.
Proficiency is commonly measured using following scale
of 4 levels:
Level 1—Beginning (person understands and speaks
conversational English with hesitancy and difficulty, understands parts of
lessons, is at emergent level of reading and writing in English). Level
2—Intermediate (person understands and speaks conversational and academic
English with decreasing difficulty, develops reading comprehension and writing skills
in English, can demonstrate knowledge in different areas with the assistance).
Level 3—Advanced (person understands and speaks conversational English without
apparent difficulty, but understands and speaks academic English with some
hesitancy, continues to acquire reading and writing skills in content areas
with assistance). Level 4 — Proficient (person reads, writes, speaks and
comprehends English within academic classroom settings).
A student’s ability to engage in conversation,
understand written or spoken text and present information orally or in writing
is developed over a number of years of learning language. Each person is
unique, and even in immersion programs, not all students attain the same level
of proficiency in the same period of time. So, assessing language proficiency
is a critical component of program evaluation. An even more important reason to
assess language proficiency is to provide students with accurate feedback on
their developing abilities in the language.
Teachers are encouraged to use assessment and
evaluation practices that are consistent with student-centred practices, for
example: designing assessment tasks that help students make judgments about
their own learning and performance; designing assessment tasks that incorporate
varying learning styles; individualizing assessment tasks as appropriate to
accommodate students’ particular learning needs; negotiating and making
explicit the criteria by which performance will be evaluated; providing
feedback on student learning and performance on a regular basis.
When students are aware of the outcomes they are
responsible for and the criteria by which their work will be assessed, they can
make informed choices about the most effective ways to demonstrate what they
know and are able to do.
Assessment activities, tasks, and strategies for
English include, but are not limited to, the following: checklists;
conferences; demonstrations; tests/examinations; media products; observation;
performance tasks; presentations; projects; questioning; written assignments.
All teachers use classroom observations during their
day-to-day instruction. The challenge is how to organize and record the
observations in a systematic way and to make effective use of the information.
Without a coherent framework, teachers’ observations run the risk of being
fragmented and therefore pedagogically less useful. Comparison of student
performance with performance objectives indicates the extent to which students
attain these objectives. Checklists and
rating scales are particularly useful because they lend themselves to
specificity and detail. Systematic
observation of student performance can be viewed as ‘testing’. Therefore, these
methods of obtaining information should have the same properties as good tests.
When selecting tasks to be used in evaluation, it is
useful to consider the response characteristics of the task. These response
characteristics can be described in general terms as close-ended, limited and
open-ended. In open-ended tasks the teacher has little knowledge beforehand of
what the students will say or write and how they will express it. Open-ended
tasks are suitable for assessing speaking and writing skills because they
require language production. Examples of open-ended tasks are oral interviews, information
gap activities, compositions, essays and term papers. Choice with respect to
the ideas, concepts, details and linguistic forms is possible within such
tasks. Judgment is necessary in scoring open-ended tasks because one student’s
response is likely to be different from other student responses but no less
correct or appropriate. To ensure that
scoring is reliable and fair, attention must be put into deciding how to score
such tasks.
Assessment via tests is also necessary, as tests seem
to motivate students to study harder and the results are often taken more
seriously than informal feedback.
References:
1.
http://www.ed.gov.nl.ca/edu/k12/curriculum/guides/english/primary/studentaccess.pdf
2. http://ell.dpi.wi.gov/files/ell/pdf/elp-levels.pdf